


With Pleasure

by domesticadventures



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Pirates, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 15:20:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1693061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domesticadventures/pseuds/domesticadventures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abaddon didn’t need anyone to help her down to hell. She made it in all on her own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Pleasure

The demons have a game they've been playing for centuries: Guess what kind of deal she made to wind up here. Certainly it wouldn't have been for anything as mundane as wealth or fame or beauty, so what did she think would be worth eternal damnation? Did she trade her mortal soul for a sword in her hand and a ship beneath her feet? For the knack for artful violence that defines her even to this day? For ten years of gleeful impunity, for freedom of the purest sort? They come up with hundreds of possible explanations, but she’s not telling and none of them are fool enough to ask.

The reason they can’t come up with the answer, of course, is because the question is based on an incorrect premise: That this is not its own reward.

And besides, Abaddon didn’t need anyone to help her down to hell. She made it in all on her own.

\--

The man who will be her husband first meets her after a raucous night of drinking and debauchery. She sits demurely in the fine silks with which she has disguised herself, and the fool mistakes her for a whore, so utterly predictably. When she laughs in his face, he smiles like he gets the joke.

“What could you possibly offer me?” she asks, because she’s feeling merciful.

He looks taken aback, as though he cannot fathom a better reward than becoming little more than his property, another treasure to be flaunted and fancied. A few seconds into her expectant stare and he’s already floundering.

“Fame,” he appends. “Fortune. A place on my ship.”

She knows a lie when she hears it, but his clothes mark him as a captain, and one out of three is still something she can work with.

She offers her hand with a smile, careful not to show her teeth. “I’ll take it.”

\--

There are already whispers amongst his crew when they set sail the next morning. _Bad luck, a woman on board_. They think her presence will bring about some vague misfortune, perhaps illness or ill weather. But oh, they haven’t seen anything yet.

Her husband dies during a storm a few weeks later. No one sees him go overboard, but the seas are rough and sailors aren’t much known for their creativity. _Bad luck_ , they say, no longer under their breath. _Bad luck_. She would laugh if she weren’t so horrendously unimpressed.

Her late husband’s first mate leads the charge against her. “You have to understand,” he begins. He lays an ostensibly comforting hand on her shoulder, but there is a rope in the other. She’s wondering if he knows, is considering reevaluating her opinion of him until he opens his mouth again. “Having a woman on board, it’s just bad lu--”

She sinks her blade into his chest with a sigh. He’s still staring at her in shock as she rolls her eyes, pushing him over the railing herself just to make sure no one can give anyone or anything but her the credit.

“Luck has no place on my ship,” she declares.

No one argues.

\--

They come to her one after another, declaring their admiration or their devotion or their love, and because she’s feeling generous, she simply rolls her eyes and tells them to get the hell out. Some of them want her hand; more of them want a free pass, the ability to hitchhike their way to glory. From that day forward, she lets no one in her bed or on her ship who must beg for what they want.

She takes no second in command because she does not see the point in making her demand for unflinching loyalty any more complicated than absolutely necessary. Others may speculate about how best to rule, through love or through fear, but for her it’s very simple.

And oh, how she loves being feared.

There are those who will attempt to understand her, to build her a tragic history or strip her down to some contrived motivation as they discuss her in their fine houses and their fancy clothes. “No one is the villain in the story of their own life,” they will say. She aims to prove them wrong on a grand scale, to show once and for all that the bare bones of their arguments do not resemble her in the least. She needs no appalling past, no grand cause, to justify her actions; there is blood in her teeth and fire in her eyes and ash in her hair, and the world is simultaneously her kingdom and her battleground. She wants death and destruction, wants flames on the horizon, wants her name spoken with awe and fury and terror, and all these she has because she creates them herself. She’s told to _go to hell_ more times than she can count, and every time her response is the same: “Oh, I plan on it.”

The rulers of a dozen countries promise her head, but months turn into years turn into decades, and that’s all the proof she needs that she is queen. She is never caught by those who seek to send her to an early grave, and when she dies, it is at the hands of the crewmember who leads the mutiny against her. When she looks into the other woman’s eyes, she sees willpower and wildfire and knows she has found a worthy successor. Her last words are praise for a job well done.

Unsurprising, really. She was never one to do anything according to any terms but her own.

\--

“Just remember,” Alistair says, “you deserve this.”

His threat falls flat. She does not fear the rack, does not dread the feel of a blade in her flesh or salt in her wounds. She understands perfectly the path that led her here, and if ever the word _fate_ fell from her lips, it was only in derision.

“No,” she says. “I _earned_ it.”

Alistair grins at that, something feral and dangerous and oh so familiar, and when he offers her a knife, she carves the last of her humanity from her tainted soul with her own two hands.

He comes to her then, all rage and chaos and darkness. He needs no introduction; she knows sin when she sees it.

"Join me," Cain says.

Abaddon grins, baring her teeth. "With pleasure."

 


End file.
